


A Portent of Things To Come

by Wikiaddicted723



Series: Children of Sin [1]
Category: Fringe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-02
Updated: 2012-08-02
Packaged: 2017-11-11 06:28:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/475546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wikiaddicted723/pseuds/Wikiaddicted723
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All stories have beginnings, even tragedies. Everything that follows is a lie. (This is a repost).</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Portent of Things To Come

**Author's Note:**

> This is a repost of the prologue for "All Good Things" as a separate piece, because it is meant to go before everything else, and I am doing a major (well, maybe not so much) reboot on some aspects of the greater arc, mostly do to getting to know the characters better after writing the prequels. I apologize for any inconvenience this might cause, and hope you hang in there, if you're reading. I have got a story to tell, it's just eating my brain faster than I can deal with it these days.

All War Is Deception  
\- Sun Tzu

 

******

_October, 1988_

_  
_

There’s a small article in Boston’s local papers by the end of the month. The news it speaks of will not be noticed by the many, and the few will profit off it. It’s not particularly devastating to any but a select group of individuals, people put in paths perpendicular to each other’s, and made to crash and burn at the crossroads, while the world watches on, undisturbed.

Like all good things, they burn brightly, and fade quickly.

The article itself is dry, uninformative and badly written. The kind of thing that would give migraines to any editor nowadays, and a final paycheck to the joke of a journalist that trashed it. It is not worth repeating.

What it reports, however, is.

 

******

 

It’s a late night for the third time that week in the basement lab of Harvard University’s Kresge building. By this time only a scientist and his assistant remain, locked away as they work incessantly on the projects at hand. They argue, as they tend to do now, more often than not.

The assistant is a patient woman, uniquely suited to the kind of man she has chosen to work with, and his brilliant if irascible mind. She is a professor of theoretical physics. She’s also a Catholic, and a devotee. Her name is Carla Warren.

The evening’s argument is simple, and not at all work related: Carla is worried. The man has a son he hasn’t seen in days, and his wife has been rotting six feet beneath the ground for the better part of the last three years. She’s not sure he has been able to cope with the loss.

He has been more irritable than usual; she says in her calm tone of voice, asks him if he’s slept well, if at all.

The scientist doesn’t take to the inquiries kindly. He responds with cutting remarks, and aggressive body language, the likes of which would give any psychiatrist a field day.

He walks through the lab with no apparent destination, his posture rigid in the suddenness of his anger, and as he turns one of his flailing arms knocks down a beaker. He lets loose hell, unknowingly.

They burn brightly, and fade quickly. But the ashes remain.

Carla dies, that night.

The scientist himself survives, though what was left of his sanity is, by then, long gone. He is brought to court, a lawyer at his side. They charge him of manslaughter with one hand, as the other declares him unsuited to serve the sentence they’ve seen fit to pass on him. He is too far gone, they say. No longer the man he used to be, they say.

So they lock him away, amongst his kind. They put him in a dark, cold cell for him to fill with his silence and his sorrow. And one night, months later, they smother him in his sleep.

His name is Walter Bishop.

 

******

 

_February, 1989_

_  
_

There is an article claiming the first page of every newspaper in America. It is consequential to everything that follows and, for many more aside from those directly involved, it will become the first unofficial omen of things to come.

The article announces, without much preamble, the main contractor chosen by the Department of Defense of the United States of America to supply its army in the years to come.

The contractor in question is unknown to all but a few. A relatively new company established late the previous year, and still crawling from the mud, as some would say.

The company’s name is, aptly, Massive Dynamic. Headed by the brilliant mind of one Doctor William Bell, named as such by the faculties of science of the best Universities in the country and who, until recently, had his head quarters in a now closed lab in the underbelly of a building in Harvard itself.

Bell, in a demonstration of charisma to rival histories greatest leaders says of this pronouncement:

“The Future is in our children, and Massive Dynamic will make sure that our government has the means to protect them”

It is the beginning of giant. Built with flesh, paved in blood.

It’s the beginning of the end.


End file.
